Back in June I saw a news article saying that the first Oakland marathon in 25 years had been approved for March 2010. For some reason it stuck with me, despite my only experience with running before now having been failing the run-a-mile-in-10-minutes-or-less portion of the mandatory President's physical fitness test in high school PE class.

But so many things seem to be coming together from so many different directions, all pointing at the same thing, that somehow it made a weird kind of sense.

So this afternoon Pirate and I went out on our first training run. Thirty minutes at a run-walk ratio of 10/50, around our neighborhood (so moderately hilly).

I'm curious if Egoscue specifically addresses running at all. I have found out that there is a proper way to run and an improper way to run. Since I don't have a coach, I'm hoping I've managed to figure out the proper way.Since I got my knee injury, at lot of people have been blathering at me about the negative effects of running on the knees. Of course, my pain was due to running on a knee that I'd injured. Since I've started running, all those snap-crackle-pop sounds that my knees used to make have stopped.

Pete would say, "It's not running that's bad for your knees, it's running while out of alignment that's bad for your knees." (Or, what I was biting my tongue to not say to somebody yesterday: "It's not gardening that's screwing up your shoulder, it's the way you garden that's screwing up your shoulder!")

Pete doesn't specifically address running or any other particular activity; instead he stresses that when you are in alignment, you can do anything you want to do.

Lately the thing I've been working on proving and re-proving to myself (I'm thick stubborn that way sometimes) is that there really is a perceptible difference between when I do my E-cises 4 days a week and when I do them 6 days a week... and 6 is definitely better.